Valuetainment - Episode 280： NYPD Commissioner Opens Up

00:00:00.220 30 seconds. One time for the underdog. Technician sequence start.

00:00:06.980 Let me see you put them up. Reach the sky, turn the stars up above.

00:00:11.100 Cause it's one time for the underdog. One time for the underdog.

00:00:17.320 I'm Patrick Bedevi, host of Valuetainment.

00:00:19.020 Today I sat down with somebody that's got a resume that could be as big as anybody else in America.

00:00:24.440 Bernard Carrick was the former commissioner of the correction department in New York,

00:00:29.520 which is the biggest one in the world. And he became the commissioner of NYPD during 9-11,

00:00:34.660 which eventually President Bush asked him to go out there and work from the White House.

00:00:38.860 But you ought to see what ends up taking place with him, how he went from a guy that was a jailer

00:00:43.380 to ends up being jailed for what he did. So anyways, enjoy today's podcast with Bernard Carrick.

00:00:47.640 I mean, that's a pretty interesting resume you have there. You know, when I, when I,

00:00:51.300 I've been around. Yeah. When I read up on you and I go through and the more I'm digging,

00:00:54.860 you got recognized, you came up with this team system that Harvard recognized as a accountability

00:01:01.660 system on how you were able to organize it. And a lot of different organizations used it and you

00:01:05.840 get credit for coming out with that. You've had over 30 awards that was given to you for different

00:01:11.200 works that you've done. I mean, there's so many different things. And then at the same time,

00:01:15.020 the time where you were standing right next to president Bush and they're talking about you

00:01:18.560 becoming who you become and then the fall right after that part. So prior to, let's go back to the

00:01:23.480 beginning on this whole thing got started. Who was Bernard Carrick at 16 years old? If I was in

00:01:28.280 high school with you, who were you? If you were in high school with me, you'd never know me because

00:01:31.640 I didn't, I didn't go to high school that much. You know, I had a pretty rough upbringing. I was

00:01:37.160 abandoned by my mother at three, three and a half. She was beaten to death and murdered when I was nine.

00:01:42.540 We moved out of Newark. It was a rough place and moved to Patterson, which was equally as rough.

00:01:48.620 It was just smaller and more compact. I went to Eastside High School, which became famous, or I

00:01:55.280 should say infamous in the major motion picture, Lean On Me with Morgan Freeman. I think there were

00:02:01.020 probably about 25, 30 white kids in the school at the time out of 1700. I was one of them. That was a

00:02:07.100 rough place to go to school and it really wasn't an education. You learn how to survive. You learn how

00:02:12.420 to fight. Ironically for me, fortunately, I got involved in the martial arts when I was 13.

00:02:18.780 I got my black belt, my first degree black belt when I was 16. And I realized school wasn't going

00:02:25.160 to do it. It wasn't a learning institution center. It was a fighting center. So for me,

00:02:32.280 the best thing to do is get out. I quit high school at 16. For the next year, year and a half,

00:02:37.500 I worked for a moving company until I realized that humping furniture for a lifetime is not the

00:02:43.720 way to go. And at 18 years old, I joined the military. And that's where my career sort of took

00:02:51.820 off. So it was a combination of the martial arts where I started to learn respect and discipline and

00:02:57.620 physically, you know, I was in phenomenal shape. Then I went in the military. I learned structure and

00:03:04.140 I learned more discipline. And I found my niche in the military. I became a military police officer.

00:03:10.840 I spent three years in the military, sometime down at Fort Bragg in North Carolina. I spent some time

00:03:16.780 in Korea, got out, went to work for a federal task force. And then some of the guys that I actually met

00:03:23.320 at Fort Bragg, they were retiring out of the military, out of the special forces units. And I get a call

00:03:29.540 one day to work in Saudi Arabia. And this is like 1978. So this is a time long before anybody in this

00:03:37.080 country knew anything about terrorism or, you know, Muslims or Islam or any of that. I remember going home

00:03:45.720 and telling my father, I'm going to Saudi Arabia to work. And my father's sitting at the dining room table and

00:03:51.460 he looks at me, he goes, Arabia. He goes, you know, I saw a movie one time like Lawrence of Arabia.

00:03:58.400 I think it's hot there. And that's about as much as anybody knew. Like nobody had a clue.

00:04:03.680 So I went to Saudi. I went on an 18 month contract. I wound up staying two and a half years.

00:04:09.160 I came back to the U.S., went to work as a cop down in North Carolina, then moved up to New Jersey

00:04:16.680 to a sheriff's department, started working there. And lo and behold, I went back to Saudi Arabia again

00:04:22.740 from 1978 to 1980. I was there the first time. Who were you representing in Saudi Arabia?

00:04:29.380 Well, I worked. Because if you're a cop in Jersey, you're going back as a contractor?

00:04:33.120 No. The first time I went as a contractor for an American firm. I was in the security division for

00:04:40.360 the firm. They were actually building the King Khalid military city up on the Kuwaiti border. The

00:04:46.240 second time I went back, I was the chief of investigations for the royal family's hospital

00:04:51.320 in Riyadh. I was young. I was 27 years old, 28 years old. And that was from 82 to 84. And ironically,

00:04:57.480 you know, it's kind of weird as I look back today, because the king of Saudi Arabia today,

00:05:02.420 King Salman, was actually at that time the governor of Riyadh. And I used to hang out with his,

00:05:09.300 the head of his security detail, who ironically was also the executioner. You know, he would

00:05:14.480 behead people on Friday. So, you know, he'd go through his thing and then we'd go to like,

00:05:19.560 we'd go eat.

00:05:20.560 Did you actually see any of it or no? You didn't see any of it?

00:05:22.940 I've seen many. I've seen, I used to remember the numbers. I think I've seen about 22 beheadings.

00:05:29.140 I've seen six dismemberments and one stoning.

00:05:31.560 What does that do to your brain? Does it numb you? Does it get you to a point where it's kind

00:05:37.620 of like, you know, it's not a big deal? The first time is pretty shocking. You know,

00:05:42.080 when you see it the first time, it's almost like in your head, you're watching this and you're thinking,

00:05:48.480 okay, that's like, you know, that's like a joke. Like, that's not real or whatever.

00:05:55.140 But it's cold. It's crude. It's rough. I stayed another two years, 18 months at that time. Came

00:06:05.840 back, went to work back in the sheriff's department that I took a leave of absence from. I became

00:06:10.980 warden of that county jail. I was 30 years old, I guess. I took over the jail.

00:06:16.060 This is Jersey.

00:06:16.960 Jersey.

00:06:17.980 Psaic County, New Jersey, Psaic County Jail. It was in Patterson where I'd sort of grown up.

00:06:24.440 And then in 1986, I filed an application with the NYPD. From the time I was young,

00:06:31.020 when I became an MP, I wanted to be a New York City cop. But I was traveling. I was in Saudi

00:06:36.960 Arabia. I was in North Carolina. I was in Jersey. I'm back in Saudi Arabia. Now the NYPD calls and

00:06:42.800 they said, listen, dude, this is it. July 1986 is your class. If you don't get in that class

00:06:50.640 because of my age, you're done. You're never going to go. Now, keep in mind, I had a gold

00:06:57.100 shield. I had stars. I had a white shirt. I had a car. I was the chief. I was 30 years old and the

00:07:04.280 warden of the Psaic County Jail, one of the biggest jobs in New Jersey. And I had to make a decision.

00:07:09.380 Am I going to leave? Am I going to, you know, give this up, give this chief jobs up, the chief's job

00:07:16.580 and take the job in the NYPD as a rookie cop? And I did. Why did you know?

00:07:23.160 Look, it was a lifelong dream. And to me, there's no greater police department in the world than the

00:07:28.800 NYPD. You know, when you watch movies, you know, if it's, if it's not the LAPD, you know,

00:07:34.440 it's LAPD is a great department. However, nothing compares to this city. And, you know, from the time

00:07:40.980 I was younger, that's all I wanted to do. So now I'm here. From the time you were, are you talking

00:07:46.320 like high school type? When you were high school, I used to see the cops. I write about this in my

00:07:50.640 first book where I used to see these cops, you know, most of the time they were slapping me around,

00:07:56.420 telling me go home or, you know, get off the street or something. From the time I was young,

00:08:00.880 I wanted to be a cop. The more I learned, the more I was exposed to the world, there's no bigger,

00:08:08.620 no better than the NYPD. And that's what I wanted. So in July of 1986, I took off the gold shield,

00:08:15.560 took off the stars and the white shirt. I went to the Brooklyn Technical Institute,

00:08:20.740 right over here in Brooklyn. Ed Koch was there, raised my right hand, got sworn in. And I went back

00:08:26.220 to Jersey and resigned. As soon as I got sworn in, I went back to Jersey, I resigned.

00:08:30.040 To make sure it was real.

00:08:31.180 To make sure it was real. All my colleagues, all my friends, you know, they pretty much said,

00:08:36.280 you're nuts. Like, you're completely insane.

00:08:38.400 Did you take a big kid with salary? I mean,

00:08:40.120 I took a 50% pay cut.

00:08:41.640 50%?

00:08:42.680 50% pay cut.

00:08:43.740 You've done that a couple times in your career.

00:08:45.220 I've done it a couple times and everybody's laughed when I've done it. And it's been hard. It was a

00:08:49.320 hardship. But it's always worked out for the best in the end. You know, you follow your dream. You

00:08:56.760 follow, you know, you follow what's in your heart. And, you know, you'll be better off for it, I think.

00:09:02.760 So from there, now you have this job, you're NYPD. You wanted to be a cop. You've been looking forward

00:09:07.860 to being an NYPD. What happens next?

00:09:09.980 Yeah, I go to the academy. I'm probably one of the oldest guys in the academy. I'm 31 years old at the time.

00:09:15.000 Most of the kids coming on their job, they're 20, 21, 22. My first assignment, I'm in Brooklyn for six

00:09:20.420 months, my training. And then I get assigned right here, right down the street, Midtown South Precinct.

00:09:25.680 I had a foot post on West 42nd between 7th and 8th Avenue, one block. And that one block all day

00:09:35.440 long, I don't care what tour you were doing, you were doing it days, afternoons, or midnights,

00:09:40.580 doesn't make any difference. For eight hours, the entire time you were on that block, you ran your

00:09:46.640 ass off. You know, man with a gun, robbery in progress, you know, a rape in a movie theater,

00:09:52.760 somebody jumped off the building, somebody threw somebody under a train, you name it,

00:09:57.000 for eight hours a day. Keep in mind, this is 1987, 88. This was the crack, the time of the crack

00:10:04.840 epidemic. It was a bad, bad place. And Times Square was booming 24 hours a day. So if you want,

00:10:13.180 if you like this job, if you wanted that type of action, you couldn't be in a better spot.

00:10:19.780 And that's what I did. If you wanted it. If you wanted it.

00:10:21.240 Were you the kind that wanted it? I wanted it. I left the chief's job to take it, to come here.

00:10:27.360 So you wanted the action. I wanted, that's what I wanted. That's what I came for. And that's what I

00:10:31.760 got. So I was in Midtown South for about a year and a half. In December of 1988, I applied for

00:10:39.020 narcotics. And I wanted a detective shield. I wanted a New York City detective shield,

00:10:45.180 a coveted gold shield. And I was told by everybody, fastest way to get a detective shield is go to

00:10:53.220 narcotics as an undercover. You can go to get a detective shield in a precinct squad. You can go

00:10:58.980 to a robbery enhancement unit. You can go to narcotics as an investigator. But if you do all

00:11:04.300 those, there's a track that gets you there probably within three to five years. If you go as an

00:11:10.400 undercover, you get your shield in 18 months. And the reason that happens is because being an

00:11:17.180 undercover, most of the time you have no vest. You have no gun. Your sole function in life is to put

00:11:24.580 yourself in harm's way to buy drugs. And didn't you at that time have earrings? You had, you wore

00:11:29.100 leather pants? You had long, what was it? Because I read some part where you were. Well, I still have

00:11:33.280 the holes. At one time, I had like seven, you know, diamonds and a gold loop in my ear. I had a big

00:11:38.460 goatee. I had a big beard. I had hair down. I had hair, period. But it was, at the time, it was down to the

00:11:45.280 middle of my back. And I get transferred to narcotics. Where did they send me? Manhattan North.

00:11:51.940 Harlem, Spanish Harlem, and Washington Heights. It was like a war zone. I remember going from Midtown

00:11:57.840 South to Manhattan North, sitting out in front of the 2-6 precinct, in front of the precinct station,

00:12:04.840 just standing out there talking to friends. And you'd hear gunfire, like on the block where the

00:12:10.920 precinct is. Shots fired down here. Shots fired around the corner. Shots fired down the other end

00:12:16.940 of the block. Is this post-mob? Like, has Joe Pistone already gone and done his six years of

00:12:22.120 undercover with the Bonanno family when the 200 people got arrested? Has that already happened?

00:12:26.800 No, it was like around, it was kind of sort of the same time. He was a little ahead of me.

00:12:32.180 Was it a shock when he came out? And you're like, what is this guy doing undercover? Because you're

00:12:35.980 working in a different department. No, honestly, I didn't even know. I didn't even know.

00:12:39.880 I heard, when I found out later, somebody called me from Patterson and said, did you see the news?

00:12:46.200 And I said, no. And they told me all about it. And they said, you know who it is? I said, no.

00:12:50.160 He said, it's Joe Pistone. I said, get the hell out of here. They said, yeah. I didn't even know

00:12:54.880 he was with the FBI. Wow, that's the part to me that's so impressive for him, to stay six years

00:12:59.080 undercover like that? Yep. I mean, that's unheard of. Actors can act for a month. This guy acted for

00:13:04.360 six years. Yeah. And listen, I was an undercover for just over two years. It's not easy. So I did

00:13:12.360 that. Did really well in what I had to do. Was involved in a couple bad things. I had some friends

00:13:18.240 that were shot and killed. My partner was actually shot and wounded in a gun battle with me. I shot

00:13:24.320 the guy that shot him. You got a medal for them. You got a... Yeah, I actually, I got 30 medals from

00:13:31.480 the NYPD alone, including the Medal of Valor. Medal of Valor was for Detective Hector Santiago was

00:13:38.440 shot. The guy fired through his windshield and he put his hand up, shot him through the arm,

00:13:45.580 and he went out the door. The second round went through the headrest of the car. So luckily he was

00:13:52.020 fast enough to get out of the car. And I wound up taking down the guy that did it. And after

00:13:56.920 narcotics, after that, I get transferred to the New York DEA task force. And that's a task force that

00:14:03.300 consists of New York City cops, New York State police troopers, investigators, and DEA agents.

00:14:11.020 And I went to the task force. I was assigned to a phenomenal group with a guy by the name of Jerry

00:14:16.220 Spezial. He was my co-case agent. And over the next three and a half years,

00:14:20.880 we wound up in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Brazil, Ecuador, and Colombia.

00:14:27.520 Did you do anything with Pablo's group or that was...

00:14:29.640 No, not Pablo's group. Ochoa was the main target in our case.

00:14:33.700 Oh, you did something with Cali, though, didn't you? I read something, you did something with Cali.

00:14:37.220 A bunch of major, major case work. We seized in about two years, over about a two-year period,

00:14:43.860 in excess of about 10 tons of cocaine, enough to fill this room.

00:14:48.300 Ten tons.

00:14:49.340 Tons. Seed 60 million in cash, brought back a whole, you know, locked up a whole bunch of bad guys.

00:14:55.040 I love that work. I liked working at the DEA. And in 1992, while this was going on, while I'm at DEA,

00:15:03.440 I actually went to a dinner one night, an Honor Legion dinner. It's a fraternal group

00:15:07.440 in the NYPD of all these heroic cops. So to get in the Honor Legion, you have to have a certain

00:15:14.280 medal or above to get in, right, to be accepted. So I went to this dinner one night. One of the guys

00:15:19.880 comes over and he says, listen, Rudy Giuliani, who was the former U.S. attorney, he's running for mayor,

00:15:26.000 and we want you to introduce him.

00:15:28.460 Is this Mayor Dinkins?

00:15:29.740 He was running against Dinkins.

00:15:31.360 Yes, Dinkins.

00:15:32.020 You know, I didn't know Rudy at the time, Mr. Giuliani at the time. So I said, okay,

00:15:37.700 I'll introduce him when he comes in. It's like five, six hundred cops. And at the time,

00:15:42.340 I had, literally, I had hair down to here. I had a big beard. I had all these earrings.

00:15:48.440 So they bring me in this thing. They introduced me to Giuliani. I shake his hand and I go out and

00:15:53.460 introduce him. And he gets this wild standing ovation based on what I...

00:15:58.680 You brought him up.

00:15:59.900 I brought him up. I introduced him.

00:16:01.680 Got it.

00:16:02.100 And lo and behold, you know, within a couple days, somebody called me and said,

00:16:06.880 Rudy called and wants to meet you for breakfast. I said, for what? What's he want? You know,

00:16:14.700 it's like, it's... I'm going to go meet him. I don't even own a suit. Like, you know, what am I

00:16:20.380 doing? I went to meet him and we had a great conversation over about an hour, hour and a half.

00:16:26.060 And I talked about the city, about narcotics, about crime, about all the stuff that was going

00:16:31.540 on in the city and got to know him. And then from that point on, this is like in 1992, I guess,

00:16:37.360 until 1994, I actually helped work on his campaign. I brought in guys, volunteers to work

00:16:44.540 on his security detail, constantly fed him information. You know, a lot of the stuff

00:16:49.480 that was going on in the PD that I thought would help the city. And then lo and behold,

00:16:53.700 in 1994, he wins and he becomes the mayor of New York.

00:16:57.900 There's a lot of cities to be mayors in. Mayor of New York is not like being mayor of,

00:17:01.420 you know, another city. This is...

00:17:03.040 No, you know why? Because when you're the mayor of New York City, it's like a national

00:17:07.360 position, right? You have the UN, you have 180 different countries represented in New York.

00:17:14.520 New York City. You have 12 million people that live here, work here, visit here, go to school

00:17:19.380 here on a daily basis. You have a bigger budget. The New York City budget is bigger than probably

00:17:25.480 40 state budgets.

00:17:27.560 New York City budget is bigger than 40 state budgets.

00:17:30.280 Yeah.

00:17:30.820 So let me ask you, while you're driving, this is the time when you were driving him on the

00:17:33.840 weekends and you had one of your guys driving him on the weekday, because that's what I read

00:17:36.780 about. Is that what it is?

00:17:38.380 Yeah, I drove him on the weekends once in a while, but mostly I supervised. I oversaw the guys.

00:17:43.880 He really trusted you. He really trusted your life.

00:17:45.900 Oh, he trusted me, yeah.

00:17:46.640 Yeah, he really trusted you. You can tell when you read about it. And I think I read somewhere

00:17:51.020 where you and him both read God, watched Godfather over 50 times or something like that.

00:17:55.100 Oh, all the time.

00:17:56.020 Yeah.

00:17:56.220 All the time. I still do it. I still do it now. But yeah, our favorite movie.

00:18:01.560 I got to know him real well between 92 and 94. I was with him a lot. So he wins, takes

00:18:07.100 over in January of 94. And in May, I get a call from my command to go down and see him

00:18:15.540 at City Hall.

00:18:16.420 January of 95. I know May he calls you, but January of 95. Who are you in New York? Are

00:18:23.200 you somebody that is already reputable, well-connected? People know who you are. You are seen as somebody

00:18:30.180 that could be a future hit.

00:18:31.900 No. January of 95, I was in the Department of Correction. Rudy called me down earlier

00:18:38.460 and said, look, I want you to, I'm putting in a new commissioner in correction. There

00:18:43.940 was a riot. That's what happened. There was a riot at Rikers. A bunch of correction officers

00:18:48.100 got hurt. And Giuliani said, look, I'm changing out. I'm getting rid of the commissioner. I'm

00:18:52.820 bringing somebody new in. He's going to need help. I want you to go. I know you ran the jail

00:18:58.040 in Jersey. Go and help him. So we agreed. I agreed. I'll do this for six months.

00:19:03.100 Not commissioner. You're helping.

00:19:04.740 No. I was going to go as the executive assistant to the commissioner.

00:19:07.860 Got it.

00:19:08.260 You know, the executive assistant or the chief of staff or a commissioner, you're the buffer

00:19:12.980 to the entire executive staff. You're the buffer to the outside community. So that's what I'm

00:19:19.880 going to do. I'm going to go there. I'm going to be his executive assistant, chief of staff.

00:19:24.080 Well, I went. And we agreed. Rudy and I agreed. I'm going for six months. Not sure what happened.

00:19:30.700 I didn't leave for six years. I was there for six months, right around the time that I was

00:19:36.400 thinking I was going to leave. The mayor made a major change. He got rid of that commissioner.

00:19:42.620 He brought in a new commissioner who was the head of probation at the time. And at 11 o'clock

00:19:48.520 at night, one night, I get a call to Gracie Manchin. And I walk in. And he says, listen,

00:19:55.580 the commissioner is going to be leaving tomorrow. And we're bringing in somebody new. He said,

00:20:01.800 and I want you to work with him to do A, B, C, D, all this stuff, he says. So I'm looking

00:20:07.640 at him. And I said, listen, I can, I'll do what I can do. I said, but he's the commissioner.

00:20:12.400 And I, you know, I can't, there's only so much I can do as the chief of staff. I don't want to. He

00:20:17.120 goes, oh, I forgot. No, you're not going to be the chief of staff. You're going to be the first

00:20:21.860 deputy. Now the first deputy commissioner is the number two guy in charge. And I'm looking at him

00:20:29.100 and I said, listen, could we talk about this? Because I ran a jail, a big jail, bad jail. This is

00:20:37.180 the biggest jail system in the country. Rikers has 10 facilities. There's six facilities in the

00:20:44.840 five boroughs. He's like, no, we just talked about it. It's fine. You're going to do this.

00:20:51.400 So you were pushing back that you didn't want this job.

00:20:53.500 I didn't, you know, I was nervous. You know, I've done it before. I actually thought I could do it.

00:20:58.720 I wasn't worried about it, but it's a big job. And he said, no, you're going to do it. And the next day,

00:21:05.180 he appointed the new commissioner, appointed me first deputy, and boom, we took off. So from that

00:21:11.820 point on, for the next two and a half years, I was the first deputy. And then the commissioner

00:21:19.640 retired. Did you know this coming or no? No. Okay. So did he retire young? Was he? No,

00:21:25.220 he went to, he does what everybody else does. They go to academia and, you know, professor at this

00:21:31.980 college, that college. He came in one afternoon, around two o'clock in the afternoon. He says,

00:21:36.680 closes the door. And we had a great relationship. His name was Mike Jacobson. He says, I got good

00:21:42.360 news and bad news. I said, well, what's, give me the bad news first. He said, bad news is I'm leaving.

00:21:49.040 I'm like, really? He said, yep. He says, I just went to see the mayor. He said, good news is you're

00:21:55.940 getting a job. I said, no, I think maybe that, that might've been the bad news part. And we laughed.

00:22:01.700 And about an hour later, the mayor called me over to city hall and says, tomorrow morning,

00:22:05.020 you're being appointed. This is the $835 million budget, 13,000 employees. This is that one you're

00:22:10.680 talking about. Right. 130,000 inmate admissions per year. Per year, yeah. About a $900 million budget.

00:22:16.820 13,000 staff. How old are you at this time? I am, let me see. That was 1998. I'm going to take

00:22:27.440 over. So I was 43. 42, 43. Yeah. And let me ask you, your personality right now, I'm sitting with

00:22:34.440 you. You seem very, you know, easygoing. You seem very chill. You seem very, you know, but is that the

00:22:40.720 personality back then? Because I've read some stuff about you. Like, you know what it is? Like, you know

00:22:44.640 how you talk to somebody and they're at a different phase and you talk about how they were at their

00:22:48.960 twenties and thirties, you ask around and they say, he was a fierce competitor. He was cold. He was

00:22:54.700 vicious. Like if they talk about certain people in certain industries to do what you were doing,

00:23:00.040 you kind of have to be that way. Aren't you? Like, aren't you paid to kind of be? Look,

00:23:04.420 I was an extremely aggressive manager. I was a no nonsense manager. I think I'm very,

00:23:10.340 and if you ask the people that work for me, they'll tell you I'm extremely firm. I'm very fair.

00:23:17.240 My management style is pretty simplistic. If you work and you work hard and you produce,

00:23:24.720 you'll get ahead. If you don't, you got to go. I'm not big on transferring failure. You see a lot

00:23:32.940 of times the guy's in this position and he's doing this thing and he's not doing well or he's,

00:23:38.480 he's messing up. Well, you know, a lot of bosses will take him and they'll move him from here to

00:23:44.760 here. I'm not big on that because if he failed over here, he's going to fail over here. How you do

00:23:50.000 one thing is how you do everything. That's your philosophy. And then more importantly, you create

00:23:54.420 dissension. You create animosity. You create sort of a cancer within the agency. So for me,

00:24:00.680 it's sort of black and white. You do well, you produce. And that was the concept. You mentioned

00:24:06.080 TEAMS earlier. TEAMS, the acronym, stands for Total Efficiency, Accountability, and Management

00:24:12.360 System. It was recognized by Harvard, the Innovations in American Government program.

00:24:17.260 And it's basically how I created the internal management system and accountability system

00:24:23.680 for Rikers. Keep in mind, when I took over Rikers, or when I went to Rikers in 1995, we averaged

00:24:29.260 150 stabbings and slashings per month. We had the highest violence rate of any jail or prison system

00:24:36.900 in the nation. It was the most violent, the most corrupt, the most dangerous, crime-ridden, dirty,

00:24:44.340 filthy, mismanaged. And in six years that I was there, we took it from the worst of the worst in

00:24:50.200 the country and turned it into an international model for efficiency, accountability, and safety.

00:24:55.620 Some interesting stats on what happened during that period. Well, there was a 93 or 94% reduction

00:25:01.300 in stabbings and slashings, a 40% reduction in overtime spending. Now, keep in mind, when I took

00:25:06.720 over, we were spending $112 million a year in overtime. I knocked that down by 40, 50%.

00:25:13.320 Assaults on staff, I knocked it down by 40. How did you do? What did you do with that? Like,

00:25:18.200 is it almost, if you're going to play dirty, you have to play your game as well? Was it a little bit

00:25:22.120 of that when you're dealing with that? It's a little bit of that, but you know what it is more

00:25:24.500 than that, far more than that? Look at Jack Welch and GE. How did he manage? He managed based on

00:25:31.500 data, data collection, Home Depot, Walmart. How do they manage? What do they do to achieve

00:25:38.880 what they want done, right? They collect data. They have performance measures. First of all,

00:25:46.520 they have goals and objectives. They create performance measures to get to those goals

00:25:52.180 and objectives. And then they have an accountability system internally that goes after those metrics,

00:25:59.440 goes after those performance measures. And you have to hold people accountable to get there.

00:26:04.640 So, slashings and stabbings, for example. I wanted the violence reduced. Nobody understood

00:26:11.440 this concept. Overtime was out of control. Sick time was out of control. For every day,

00:26:19.220 you're, you know, the correction officers in the department at the time, you had in their,

00:26:23.640 in the budget, 12 days a year sick time in the budget per correction officer. So they could be up to,

00:26:30.180 up to, they could be sick for up to 12 days. It was in the budget. Anything over that,

00:26:34.240 that they were over that 12-day period, $1.6 million. That's what it cost the agency.

00:26:42.020 My average, when I took over the department of correction, was 22 days a year. That's $35 million

00:26:49.060 that it cost the city. So when I came in and I looked at this, I said, you know what? The overtime

00:26:56.680 and the sick time is driven by one thing. It's driven by violence. If you drive down the violence,

00:27:03.680 you're going to drive down the overtime and the sick time. And everybody was looking at me like

00:27:07.440 I had three heads. How do you drive down violence, though? Well, you go out, the violence thing is

00:27:12.380 easy. The violence thing is holding the inmates accountable for criminal conduct. And here's what

00:27:19.600 I mean. So the punishment's a bigger punishment. When I came into the department, the first stabbing,

00:27:24.780 the first major bad thing that I saw, two Spanish kids took a black kid, held them down on the ground,

00:27:32.060 took a chicken bone, sharpened, and they gave him about 70 stitches in his back. They carved LK

00:27:37.920 into his back, the initials for Latin Kings. And my guys came to my office and I said, all right,

00:27:44.180 what happens now? What are we doing with these guys? They said, well, they went to punitive

00:27:47.780 segregation. I said, I know, but what are they charged with? Well, we don't charge them criminally.

00:27:53.140 Why? Why? They said, because the Bronx DA won't prosecute it. And I said, wait a minute. They held

00:28:00.140 the kid down on the ground. They gave him 70 stitches. If I walked outside the facility, if I walked

00:28:05.900 outside this hotel and I went out on the street and I took a small razor blade and I nicked you in your

00:28:11.400 hand, I'd get charged with assault, possession of a weapon, and who knows what else, right? In jail, you mean

00:28:18.060 to tell me you could just about murder somebody and nobody's getting charged criminally? All right,

00:28:22.140 that's going to stop. So I called the Bronx DA and I said, listen, he said, I don't have the manpower

00:28:26.700 to prosecute all these cases. I said, you have it now because I'm going to send people to you. I'm

00:28:32.300 going to send investigators up to the Bronx. I'll do whatever you need, but I can't, this can't be a

00:28:37.360 criminal haven for criminal activity. Interesting. So how soon did that happen? How soon did that

00:28:43.640 standard get applied? Within a month. Okay. And then how soon did everybody, how the inmates

00:28:48.740 realize what's happening there? So, I mean, obviously news travels pretty fast. In three

00:28:53.580 months, we saw a substantial reduction, but then there's other things. I enhanced the emergency

00:28:58.600 service unit to go out and start doing searches of the dormitories. You know, guys slash and stab,

00:29:05.800 they need weapons, right? Where's the weapons? So you start looking for the weapons. You start

00:29:10.440 holding the inmates accountable. You start holding the staff accountable to make sure that they're

00:29:16.540 going out and doing the job they're supposed to do when they're on duty. That's the piece on the

00:29:20.500 violence. And I'm making it simplistic. It's far more complicated, but simplistically, that's sort of

00:29:27.580 what we were doing. Now, when the violence comes down, you have less hospital runs. Say there's a

00:29:33.800 confrontation between two inmates. This inmate gets cut. This inmate gets cut. They go to the hospital.

00:29:39.840 This guy needs two officers on him. You need two on you. Those two come from a facility.

00:29:46.220 So now you have four officers that have to go to the hospital. You have to backfill the positions

00:29:50.640 at the facility. You now have four, eight guys on overtime. And people in, you know, headquarters

00:29:58.400 and in City Hall, they couldn't figure out where all the overtime was coming from.

00:30:02.940 So let me ask you, where did you learn this? Because you mentioned Jack Welch. Are you reading

00:30:06.520 business books at that time or no? Honestly, are you reading? David Osborne wrote a book called

00:30:12.300 Reinventing Government. And when I was tooling around with Giuliani in 1992, from 1992 to 1994,

00:30:19.560 Giuliani had the book in the car. And I went and got the book for myself. And I read the book.

00:30:25.200 What gets measured gets done. That's the thing, the only thing I remember about it now. But I

00:30:29.300 basically took that book, the business concept of management, and said, you know what? It works

00:30:36.180 in business. It works in Home Depot. It works in Walmart. It works in General Electric and all

00:30:42.620 these places. You put it in prisons. Wow. And I said, why can't it work here? So when you look

00:30:47.480 at overall stats, right? Violence, overtime, routine maintenance, you know, they shut down

00:30:53.780 a complete wing of a jail system, a complete wing because they didn't have a key. How long

00:31:00.800 does it take to make a key? Well, it takes three days. Three days? Makes three, takes three

00:31:06.020 days. I would have meetings and I would lose my mind. It takes three days to make a key?

00:31:12.680 Well, you have to put the order and you got to do a thing and then it's got to get approved

00:31:16.100 and then it's got this. Really? So that key that took three days to get made cost me $200,000

00:31:24.900 extra for that three-day period because I had to move inmates to another facility? Are you

00:31:31.140 crazy? No. Making a key takes about four minutes. So we're going to streamline the process to

00:31:36.580 get to the key maker and we're going to make the key in about an hour.

00:31:40.880 How much of that happens today in the government? It's amazing. I remember being in the army, they

00:31:44.500 used to say government spends money like they buy products that are not even worth that much

00:31:48.740 and they're paying over for it just because somebody doesn't know how to negotiate and

00:31:51.780 someone's not holding them accountable to be able to negotiate those contracts.

00:31:54.680 Forget the negotiation. You just said the magic word. It's all about accountability.

00:31:58.740 Accountability. The negotiation part is a part of the accountability. You need to hold people

00:32:03.820 accountable. How much are you making at that time as a commissioner of a correction?

00:32:07.140 About $140,000 a year. See, that's a problem as well, though, you know, because when you look at

00:32:11.820 how police officers get paid, right? So the current way, at least when you look it up, a police officer

00:32:18.220 in Newark who is not the safest place versus maybe another city in Jersey. Don't talk about Newark.

00:32:23.640 My son's a cop in Newark. And I read that. That's great. The fact that he's 32 years old, right?

00:32:28.040 33 years old. Yeah. When you read that and you say, okay, well, a cop in a safer place, you know,

00:32:34.920 Beverly Hills, 90210, nicer zip code. They're getting paid more, yet they're doing less to work

00:32:40.420 because there is no crime than a guy in Detroit as a cop's making $36,000. It just doesn't make

00:32:46.080 any sense. So the areas where they're working double time, they're getting paid less than the areas

00:32:51.400 where they're not getting any kind of things going on. They're getting paid more. I think there's a

00:32:55.640 little bit of a flaw there in the math. Well, there's a flaw. Listen, it's not only a flaw.

00:33:00.860 The governments, the city governments, state governments, they can only afford what they can afford.

00:33:04.580 How do you solve that? How do you solve that? You know what you have to hope?

00:33:09.300 Yeah. You have to have hope that you have cops like my son. And this is a true story,

00:33:15.260 what I'm going to tell you. He started his career in Passaic County, where I was. And about three

00:33:20.560 years in, he got laid off. And I called him up to my house. And I said, listen, I'm going to help you

00:33:24.500 get a job. And I got some great places that make an enormous amount of money. And I'm going to call the

00:33:30.160 chief. And I'm going to see if you can go here, you know, to Ridgewood, New Jersey, or, you know,

00:33:35.340 Paramus, New Jersey. Cops are a white shield uniform cop making $120,000, $130,000 a year.

00:33:43.000 That's amazing. That's amazing right there.

00:33:44.400 Okay. My son comes in. He says, that's all right, dad. I know where I'm going. I said,

00:33:49.640 where are you going? He said, don't get mad. But I know where I'm going. And I've already planned it.

00:33:54.360 And I want to go there. I said, where are you going? He said, I'm going to Newark. And I just

00:33:57.680 looked at him. I said, dude, you're going to Newark. It's probably one of the lowest paying

00:34:02.300 jobs in the state. And it's like the eighth highest crime rate in America. You're going to

00:34:08.440 Newark. And I said, why don't you come up here where I live? And he looks at me. This is God's

00:34:13.920 honest truth. He says, dad, when your wife has geese in a swimming pool out back, she calls the

00:34:21.280 cops. He goes, I am not chasing geese. I run a swimming pool. That's what he said. So I tried

00:34:32.320 the money thing, you know, like he goes. So he's a true believer. And I said, listen, I said, what

00:34:37.740 about the money? What about your career? He goes, oh, I'm talking to the guy that took a 50% pay cut

00:34:44.360 because he wanted to follow his dream. How's his relationship with you? Does he admire? Is there

00:34:48.300 a level of admiration for you? Well, my son literally is my best friend. He's my best

00:34:54.020 friend. You know, he's my closest confidant. He's my best friend. I have the same relation

00:34:58.060 with my dad. My dad's my best friend in the world. And I can't even describe it to you that

00:35:00.860 affinity. If I want to be happy, I'm around him. My best friend. My best friend. So I'm assuming

00:35:04.680 you're a big Yankees fan. Absolutely. You were telling me earlier something about the logo.

00:35:08.520 So what is the special thing about this Yankees logo? See this logo? Yes. In 1877,

00:35:13.960 the NYPD created a medal of honor. On that medal of honor is a logo just like this. That's where

00:35:20.120 this logo came from. Wow. Because in 1923, the New York Yankees adopted it. So there's this

00:35:25.540 close connection. There's this tie between New York City cops and the New York Yankees. And that's

00:35:31.360 one of the reasons. And that's, you said who designed it? Tiffany's designed it? Tiffany's

00:35:34.840 cast-eyed at the time. And you said the one when you got your commissioner badge, the first one

00:35:40.820 that was given in 18-something was? Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt. Teddy Roosevelt was the head of

00:35:47.080 the commission in 1897. Wow. 1897. And then years later, you're the 40th. Yep. What a story.

00:35:52.680 40th police commissioner. Let's go back to that part. So obviously you have certain systems that's

00:35:56.300 working in the jail you're running. 13,000 employees, 140,000, 130,000 inmates that are coming

00:36:01.540 through regularly. You have all these different responsibilities that you're doing. $900 million

00:36:05.340 budget. You're changing the numbers. You're bringing on overtime from $120 million, 40% lower.

00:36:11.200 All of these things, you made the decisions. Your key's going to cost $200,000 because you've got

00:36:14.820 to move people away three days. So now how do you go from there to commissioner of NYPD? I mean,

00:36:19.320 that's a, how does that happen? You know what happens? The pre-story to that is 11 days earlier,

00:36:25.180 the New York City police commissioner, Howard Safer, resigned, retired. Retired. So this is on a

00:36:30.320 positive note. Nothing negative. No, no, it wasn't negative. He was leaving. He was done. And the mayor had

00:36:34.800 to fill that position. So at the end of the 11 days, there were two people in the running. Joe Dunn was the

00:36:40.560 chief of department for the NYPD. He's the number three in command. And it was me that they were

00:36:45.860 looking at. The mayor interviewed him. The mayor interviewed me. And for 11 days, we had no clue

00:36:52.600 who it was. Nobody. We didn't have an idea. Are you talking to him throughout that 11 day period or

00:36:58.380 not at all? I had to meet with him. I, you know, constantly. There's still communication. There's

00:37:02.440 communication, but he's not saying a word. And on August, I think it was August 19th. It was a

00:37:07.960 Friday night. Mayor called my house about 1130 that night and said, tomorrow morning, you're going to

00:37:12.720 be appointed in New York City's 40th police commissioner. So you go from having 13,000 staff

00:37:18.980 members to having 55,000. You go from a billion dollar budget to having a three and a half billion

00:37:25.800 dollar budget. Most importantly, you're not dealing with the inmates, but you have to worry about the

00:37:30.400 12 million people that visit, live, work, go to school in the city on a daily basis. The next

00:37:35.460 morning, I went to City Hall and I was appointed New York City's 40th police commissioner. How'd you

00:37:41.260 feel at the time? I can't say how I felt at the time. I was sort of floating on a cloud. It's sort of

00:37:45.880 overwhelming. You know, it's, it's, it's a big, enormous job. Cause you know, sometimes when

00:37:50.920 you're in that moment, it goes so fast that you don't even have time to appreciate it. Yeah. But

00:37:55.540 you know what I've had in my career, I've had about four or five of those correction commissioner,

00:38:01.280 getting appointed as commissioner, getting appointed to the NYPD as commissioner. I remember in 2003,

00:38:08.220 I was sent to Iraq by president Bush as the interim minister of interior. And I remember getting there

00:38:14.000 and I was there for less than 24 hours and my press guys come to me and they said,

00:38:18.420 commissioner, the press, they know you're here now. So you have to do a press conference. So we're

00:38:24.660 going to go over and do the press conference. And I said, okay, so where are we going? We're going to

00:38:29.060 this big hall in this, in the Republican guard palace. And we get over there and there's this big,

00:38:35.540 massive throne. That's the only, that's the only way I could describe it. It's a throne made out of like

00:38:43.220 tiger skin or leopard skin or something. I forget what it was. And they said, okay, you're going to go up

00:38:48.960 on the, on the dais up there and you're going to sit in that chair. And then, and I said, guys, I got to sit in

00:38:53.680 that chair? They said, yeah. I said, why? They said, well, cause that's where the press is. Can't you get a

00:39:00.400 normal chair? They said, listen, that was Saddam's chair. Just go up there and sit in the chair. And I can remember

00:39:06.880 thinking in my head, really? That was Saddam's chair. Like Saddam had meetings here like two

00:39:12.900 months ago and I'm sitting in his chair. So it's that kind of stuff in my career. I can remember

00:39:18.060 things like that. That was kind of nuts. So, okay. So now you're NYPD commissioner, everyone around

00:39:24.300 the States knows you. You're always on TV. You're being written about, talked about paper every day.

00:39:30.340 There's something because you're the man in charge. You're, you're, you're the guy that's running the

00:39:33.240 whole show. What's between then and the next call. And I'm talking to call from the top where the

00:39:40.520 commander in chief makes the call. What happens during that time? I think the biggest thing was

00:39:44.680 846 on the morning of September 11th. I was the commissioner. I was in my office. I was actually

00:39:52.120 taking a shave. I just finished exercising. I'm standing there taking a shave and my chief of staff

00:39:58.580 came in banging on the door. I opened the door and I said, what is it? What are you, what are you doing?

00:40:02.300 He said, a plane just hit tower one. And I said, all right, calm down. And I thought it was,

00:40:07.840 I thought I was going to look out the window and see, you know, a small aircraft sticking out the

00:40:12.120 window or something. I looked at the damage of the building. I could see it on, I had a TV above

00:40:16.980 our treadmill, my treadmill, and I could see the damage. So I actually walked out of my office with

00:40:21.460 the towel wrapped around me, went into my conference room, pulled back the shades, and I could see

00:40:28.120 the building. It's only about a quarter mile away. I looked at the top of the building and I could see

00:40:33.260 the damage. And I thought, that's no small plane. I don't know what that is. I even had doubts whether

00:40:38.400 it was a plane at all. I didn't know what it was. I called the mayor. I said, look, I'll meet you at

00:40:42.840 Seven World Trade Center, which was right across the street from Tower One. That's where our command

00:40:47.360 center was.

00:40:47.940 Is that Seven World Trade Center or 75 Barclays? Oh, 75 Barclays is where you guys ended up.

00:40:52.100 No, 75 Barclays is where I got trapped.

00:40:53.760 Right.

00:40:54.100 I went downtown, went to go to Seven World Trade, and when we got to Vesey Street, there were cops

00:40:59.580 on that corner stopping the traffic. And my guy said, look, I got the commissioner in the car.

00:41:05.520 And a sergeant ran up to the car and he says, he salutes me and he says, commissioner, you can't get

00:41:10.160 onto the block. He said, they're jumping. And I said, what? He said, they're jumping. And I had no

00:41:14.820 conception of what he was talking about. I didn't know what he was talking about. I got out of the

00:41:18.280 car and I looked down the street and, you know, people were jumping.

00:41:22.460 You saw that. You saw that taking place.

00:41:25.220 Yeah, but listen, I know people saw it on TV, but in the early minutes, in that first,

00:41:31.740 I'd say in that first 30 minutes, in that first 15, because I was down there within seven or eight

00:41:37.000 minutes, I probably watched two or three dozen people jump. They were coming down some two or three

00:41:43.520 at a time. And they were landing on Vesey. They were landing in the courtyard between tower one

00:41:48.040 and tower two, and they were hitting the overhangs of the building. So you could hear it. I was up the

00:41:52.000 block. I was about a hundred yards up the block and you could hear him hitting that overhang and,

00:41:57.580 you know, exploding. So the mayor got the air within three or four minutes after the second plane.

00:42:04.460 I was standing in front of tower one and tower two when the second plane slammed through the north

00:42:10.320 side of the tower. I could hear the aviation pilots or helicopter pilots in NYPD saying that a second

00:42:17.720 airliner just slammed through tower two. And that's when I realized we were under attack.

00:42:22.200 What happens next? Giuliani gets there within two or three minutes. I told them what I had just seen.

00:42:27.240 We actually walked down to West Street. We went to the command center where the fire department's

00:42:32.180 executive staff was. So it was the first deputy commissioner. It was the chief of department,

00:42:37.340 chief of operations, their chaplain, father judge, a couple of NYPD guys that I knew. We talked to

00:42:43.120 them. We were there about 10, 15 minutes and we left, went back to 75 Barclay Street where I initially

00:42:49.740 met him. We were going to put him in an office there so that he could call the White House. We wanted to

00:42:56.600 make sure we had air support. We wanted to make sure we were getting resources from the government.

00:43:00.760 And he went into this small office at 75 Barclay. We're standing there. Our staff is all around us.

00:43:09.540 He's sitting in front of me on a phone. He's talking to the White House and all of a sudden he

00:43:13.960 hangs up the phone and he looks at me and he says, that's not good. I said, what is it? He said,

00:43:19.600 I think they said that the Pentagon just got hit and they're evacuating the White House. I didn't even

00:43:27.200 have time to grasp what he said because as he said that, the building we were in started to shake

00:43:34.280 like a freight train was coming through the side of it. The door slammed open and Joe Esposito was my

00:43:41.380 chief of department. The door slams open and he yells, everybody get down, it's coming down. And I

00:43:46.300 didn't know if he was talking about the building we were in or something else. All the windows blew

00:43:51.220 out. The doors blew open. The place filled with dust and gas and debris. And it was over in about

00:43:57.220 12 seconds and it was mass chaos outside. We couldn't breathe. So we actually got trapped inside

00:44:04.560 there. We couldn't get out the way we went in because that was on the outside. And so we were

00:44:09.900 going to try to get through the building. All the doors were locked. We were physically trapped in

00:44:14.600 this office suffocating. And all of a sudden one of the doors opened and there's these two

00:44:19.220 Spanish guys that were maintenance guys with a ton of keys on them. And I said, those keys for these

00:44:26.240 doors? He said, yes, sir. I said, open these doors. I need to get to Church Street. I need to go that

00:44:31.820 way. And he opened the doors and off we went. And we got out of the building. Otherwise, I could remember

00:44:37.880 actually thinking, I've been in gun battles. I've been stabbed. I've been shot at. I'm going to die

00:44:42.520 suffocating in this room because I can't breathe. We eventually got out. And Mayor Giuliani is with

00:44:46.660 you the entire time or you put him at that office to just... No, no. He was with us. The entire time.

00:44:51.060 The whole time. And you're trying to get into Church Street. So he's going to be... And we did. We,

00:44:54.620 you know, we got through the doors. We got out on the church. You know, it was weird. We got to

00:44:58.700 Church Street. That building, the whole front of that building is solid white, you know, big windows,

00:45:03.960 floor to ceiling windows. And I remember walking into that lobby and looking out at those windows and

00:45:09.400 they were white. They were solid white. And I'm like, what is that? What's house? What is that?

00:45:13.360 We went over to the circular vestibule door, pushed the door open, got outside. And there were two

00:45:18.700 things that struck me. Now, we are literally, we're probably three or four blocks from the towers,

00:45:24.560 right? There was this much dust on the ground where we were all over. And there was no sound.

00:45:30.120 It was absolutely no sound. No birds, no sirens, no horns, no nothing. It was like when you walked

00:45:35.600 out that door, it was like somebody put earphones on you and you couldn't hear anything. It was really

00:45:41.120 strange. And then somebody told us that the building came down. So at this moment, Mayor

00:45:45.200 Giuliani gets a call. He realizes Pentagon got hit as well. White House is being evacuated. All eyes

00:45:50.400 on New York. Everybody's watching to see what's going to happen. What happens next? We got out on

00:45:54.760 the Church Street. You know, when you talk about leadership and you talk about some of the stuff

00:45:58.920 I've done and people credit me for things, my management style. I remember getting out on to

00:46:04.400 Church Street and the mayor turning to his press secretary and says, get me a pool camera right

00:46:11.840 now. And I can remember, and I know him well, and I can remember looking at him thinking, really?

00:46:18.200 We're going to do a press conference here? Like, I don't know if this is the time, but it wasn't the

00:46:23.320 time. And that's not what he was doing. He already knew in his mind that the entire world's watching

00:46:30.500 and somebody has to tell them that it's going to be okay. And when you think back to that day and

00:46:36.420 you look at that footage, you'll see him. We're literally walking. I mean, we're in motion. And

00:46:42.900 they get the pool camera. They get up to him. They get the microphone, stick it in his face. And he

00:46:47.860 said, listen, here's what I want. You know, people stay in your house. You know, don't panic.

00:46:53.360 It's bad, yes, but it's going to be okay. We're going to get through this. And between that and

00:47:00.400 the first press conference, which was later that afternoon, I can't tell you how many people,

00:47:05.460 thousands of people that have come up to me in airports, walking down the street, in different

00:47:11.760 towns, in the West Coast, all over the country, where I've been, where people have come up to me and say,

00:47:17.840 you made me feel safe. Because I had no damn idea what was going to happen. And if it wasn't for you

00:47:23.880 and it wasn't for Giuliani, I don't know what would happen. I don't know what I was thinking. But you

00:47:27.720 guys made me feel safe. Even people who disagree with you, they've said that as well. Even people

00:47:32.960 who are kind of like, you know, I don't like the way he handled X, Y, Z. When it came down to how that

00:47:37.560 9-11 event was handled, we wouldn't want to have anybody else in that position than him. We did the best we

00:47:42.680 could. But I think the combination worked and worked well. That led to President Bush giving

00:47:49.220 you a call. How many years after? That's in 01. I think 04 is when he called. I leave in 02. I

00:47:55.340 leave in January of 02. I retire. I'm done with my government service. So I thought until May of 03.

00:48:01.940 I was actually at, you know, I'm in Manhattan. I'm going to Barney's to buy some shirts. My cell phone

00:48:06.460 rings. It's somebody at the Pentagon. They said, the president wants you to come meet with Secretary

00:48:11.160 Rumsfeld. And then I wound up going to Iraq for four months as the Minister of Interior to get them

00:48:17.740 up and running and to get the new Minister of Interior in place. My wife wasn't too happy about

00:48:22.440 that, given it was a war zone. But I went. I did what the president wanted. Got it done. Came back.

00:48:28.500 Then I thought my government service was over for sure. Then in December, you know, the president gets

00:48:33.380 re-elected. November of 04. Within about a week after he gets re-elected, I get a call from the White

00:48:41.080 House. They're sending me some questions. And they send me those questions.

00:48:46.420 Is this Dana Powell or Dina Powell?

00:48:48.080 Dina Powell.

00:48:48.460 Dina Powell.

00:48:49.160 Yeah.

00:48:49.540 Dina. Man, you've got a good memory.

00:48:51.100 Yeah.

00:48:51.500 Damn. Dina Powell sends me some questions, answer them, get it back to us, at which time

00:48:56.640 I find out that I'm being considered to take Tom Ridge's job in Homeland Security. I've already

00:49:01.640 run the largest police department, largest jail system. This was a job. It was a new job.

00:49:06.860 The Department of Homeland Security had just been created under Ridge. He put it all together.

00:49:12.160 22 federal agencies and a staff of about 180,000 people. I was ready. I thought I could do it. I

00:49:18.660 knew I could do it. The president knew I could do it. We had that conversation, him and I, actually.

00:49:22.700 Is that when he had just come back from a Canada flight?

00:49:25.020 How would you know this?

00:49:25.920 Because I've studied your story, and so the night before, there's a part the night before

00:49:30.740 where you were in tears because you turned down the job the first time. Then this, I'm

00:49:34.740 like, I'm curious to know how, what was the, you know, you were conflicted. What were you

00:49:39.380 thinking about the night where you and your wife were like, babe, I don't know if I want

00:49:41.880 to, like, I don't know what that conversation was like.

00:49:43.300 You know what it was? It was the Thanksgiving. It was either the night before or the night

00:49:47.300 after Thanksgiving. You know, they called me and said, this is it. You know, the president's

00:49:52.120 going to ask you if you want the job, and I thought, if I take this job, like, my life

00:49:57.140 savings now at this point is pretty substantial. You know, I've been in the private sector for

00:50:02.200 three years. I was making good money, but I'm going to have to give up a substantial piece

00:50:08.660 of this in the millions. You know, you have to be specific. That's 100,000 shares at $50

00:50:12.820 a share. No, it was like, it was like $8 million. They were basically telling me, you got to

00:50:18.840 forfeit. Yeah. And I was like. This is the Taser company, right? Taser, right.

00:50:22.120 Taser stock. And I'm like, you know, I don't know. You know, I don't know if I want to do

00:50:26.220 that. And my wife was like, is it really worth it? I don't know. I don't think so. I told

00:50:31.740 my wife, I said, OK, I'm done. I'm not going to do it. You sure? I said, yeah. OK. So I'm

00:50:37.680 going to wait until they call, and then I'm going to tell them. So Dina calls. I said, look,

00:50:41.800 I got to talk to you. I don't think this is going to happen. And she said, hold on. And

00:50:45.520 Andy Card got on the phone. And Andy Card was the chief of staff for the president. I forget

00:50:49.200 the entire conversation. But he basically says, look, you know, there's all that stuff

00:50:53.080 in the press where the president's looking at this guy and that guy and this person and

00:50:56.500 that person. He's only interested in one person. He wants you to take the job. And I remember,

00:51:02.440 I'm sitting in my office and my wife's sitting there across from me and she's looking at me

00:51:06.420 and she's going, no, no, no, don't, no. And I'm like, and I'm going, yes, sir. Uh-huh.

00:51:11.440 And I'm scared to death. Like, I don't want to, I don't want to say nothing out loud that's

00:51:14.680 going to give her away that I'm doing this. And I agreed, I'm going to go see the president.

00:51:18.640 I hang up the phone. I told her, I said, look, I can't say no to the president. I'm not going

00:51:23.580 to do it. I said, you know, let me, I'm going to go see him. This was like, this was like,

00:51:28.440 I think on a Monday or something. So I got to go see him on Wednesday. And I get in the

00:51:34.300 car and I drive to DC. Me and Tony Carbonetti, Giuliani's chief of staff, we drove down together.

00:51:40.480 We went to the JW Marriott. And I would have forgot that if you didn't remind me. And I can

00:51:45.840 remember the president flying over the building here in the helicopters. And Tony, we're sitting

00:51:50.500 in the hotel suite and he looks at me, says, okay, start getting ready because he's going

00:51:55.000 to call you as soon as he lands. And as soon as he got in, boom, they called. I went over

00:51:59.220 to the White House where they snuck me in, got to the White House and the president, I walked

00:52:05.040 in, give me a hug. He said, I'm looking for a secretary of homeland. You want it? I said,

00:52:10.160 yes, sir. He said, sit down. He said, I want to tell you why you're picked. And that was

00:52:16.260 it.

00:52:16.380 So in that moment when you're going through that decision, this is, this is not a regular

00:52:21.300 position. Now you've been commissioner of a New York correction, commissioner of NYPD,

00:52:26.620 sat in the chair with Saddam Hussein. You've had some interesting experiences there. And now

00:52:31.620 you're being called by the president to say, here's homeland security. It's your job. While

00:52:35.940 you're going through that, and I'm talking to Scaramucci earlier, are you sitting there thinking

00:52:41.240 about all the research, due diligence, everything that's about to happen? No. And you're not

00:52:47.100 thinking about that in that moment? No. Got it. So you're not thinking any, you're like, hey,

00:52:50.440 I'm going to do my job. I'm going to be called up on and I know how to handle this. I'm the best

00:52:54.120 guy for it. You're thinking about the job. Got it. You're thinking about, you know, and I'm sure

00:52:58.340 Anthony, you know, he's focused on the job. You're focused on the job. You're focused on what's

00:53:03.200 going to happen. What do you have to do? You know, and in my mind, I was four steps ahead of it

00:53:09.180 already. You know, okay, staffing, agencies, you know, I was, I was there already in my head

00:53:16.120 before I even talked to the president. When I knew I was being considered, I wasn't thinking about

00:53:21.160 anything, but how am I going to do this and have as much success as I've had my whole career? I've

00:53:28.140 never failed ever. In fact, not only have I never failed, I had enormous success. I'm

00:53:33.580 going to do the same thing here. So that's where my head is. What you never realize, what

00:53:37.420 nobody realizes, unless you are positioned for one of these jobs, you come out of high

00:53:42.720 school, you go to college, you go to law school, you clerk for a federal judge, you go to a major

00:53:48.020 firm, you become a U.S. attorney, you become a judge, and then you get a job. And the whole

00:53:53.480 time, you're like Mr. Goody Two-Shoes, right? Down the road until you get to where you're

00:53:58.480 going. If you've had a life, getting these jobs are hard. And I can remember there were

00:54:04.580 times when I was actually being vetted. We had a conference room in our office, Giuliani

00:54:10.380 and I. It was, it had to be 25 feet long, 30 feet long. Major conference. Here. In New

00:54:15.940 York City. Right. Times Square. In that conference room, on the conference table, every set of taxes

00:54:21.140 that I had since I was 18 years old on that table. Come on. No, I'm not joking. Every

00:54:26.240 set of taxes. Every set of taxes. This is before you take the job or once you took the

00:54:30.240 job? Once you, once you're in the process. So once you're being possible. Once you accept

00:54:34.200 Homeland Security. Homeland Security. Once you accept the nomination. Does the world know

00:54:38.660 about it yet or not yet? Oh yeah, they know. Okay. Because the president announced that on

00:54:41.800 that Friday. Okay. So from that point on, you got to, you know, every speech you've ever

00:54:46.520 given. Every application you've ever filled out for a job. Every, every taxes, every year's

00:54:53.060 taxes. All this stuff. You have to have, I had a group of people sitting around there

00:54:58.640 like lawyers and analysts and all these people just going through this stuff. One thing after

00:55:03.360 a month. What are they looking for? Oh, because of this one thing you should resign. Oh, because

00:55:06.800 this is not. They're looking for inconsistencies. They're looking for, I think most importantly,

00:55:11.260 what they're looking for are where could you get tripped up in Congress at a congressional

00:55:17.160 hearing? Who's going to not like your position that you said in this speech, this thing, who's

00:55:23.020 not going to like that and have a problem with it? And what's ironic as I learned, I'd say

00:55:28.100 90% of the people in Congress that would scrutinize me, they can never even get my job. They can

00:55:35.620 never get that job. Of course. They couldn't be vetted. Right. They've never had an executive

00:55:39.380 position. They've been in politics the whole time. They couldn't do it. They can't do it.

00:55:44.860 Which is kind of frustrating when you're going through this process, especially when you flunk

00:55:49.460 out of the process because you come to the realization that the people that scrutinized

00:55:54.700 you or that had all this negative stuff to say about you, they couldn't hold a candle to

00:56:00.080 you. Let me ask you this. So, you know, this kind of takes me to, you know, the movie,

00:56:04.560 A Few Good Men, where the whole part's going back and forth and you can't handle the truth.

00:56:08.460 You want the truth. You cannot. And then at the end, he says, you need me. Like, you

00:56:12.600 know, like not everybody can do my job. And so I'm sitting there and I'm like, okay, code

00:56:16.620 red, code red. You know, you got to do code red, but we don't put it in the manual that

00:56:20.660 there's code red. No one talks about it. Okay. What they did to, you know, private such and

00:56:26.100 such, Santiago. I think that was a kid's name. And then you sit there and say, it has to be

00:56:31.300 an SOB to be able to run, you know, that camp to be able to do the work.

00:56:37.160 But here's, you know, that's a really, really good point. It's a really good point, especially

00:56:42.760 that thing. You need me. That's logic. But that's not reality. Because those guys in Washington,

00:56:51.560 they don't give a damn, really. They don't give a damn. They don't need you.

00:56:56.680 Things that came up. What were the things? So I read all of them. I read every single

00:57:00.280 one of the controversial stuff that came up on you. Yeah, I had a nanny. You had a nanny.

00:57:04.380 But okay. And that was what, 14 months that taxes weren't paid for her, right? That was

00:57:09.360 14 months or whatever the number was. Yeah. And I, ironically, what a lot of people don't

00:57:13.260 know, as soon as I withdrew, I actually, I paid the taxes. I paid the penalties. I paid

00:57:20.980 the fines. You $220,000 in fines, I think. Whatever it was. Yeah. I forget what it was.

00:57:25.100 I paid all that stuff immediately after, like in probably January, February of 05. Then there's

00:57:32.100 all these investigations that start, right? And you start getting scrutinized. The press

00:57:37.240 is pushing one way. The prosecutors are following up the press. And they're feeding each other.

00:57:43.060 They feed each other. So you go through this process where now it's no longer about the nanny.

00:57:48.680 Anything you've ever done in your entire life that anybody has a problem with, they have now

00:57:54.800 crawled out from under a rock. And they're making calls to every press. I get it. But what was them

00:58:00.380 like? Okay. If you went to prison and you did three years, I think a lot of people should be doing the

00:58:05.840 same time as well. And they have similar cases, if not worse. One of them was the one I pulled up that

00:58:10.920 was the quarter million by the Israeli businessman that gave you a no interest-free...

00:58:15.840 No, it's completely false. So that's what I read. So I'm going to kind of list some of them that I

00:58:19.780 remember. Okay. Now, it's reported. You know which one I'm talking about. It's reported. It's on

00:58:24.520 Wikipedia. And for some reason, they refused to pull it off. I can't figure out why. An Israeli

00:58:29.680 businessman gave me an interest-free loan that I never paid back. And I was charged with a bribe

00:58:36.380 and bribe receiving. That's what it says on Wikipedia. Bottom line is, it was no interest-free

00:58:42.020 loan. It was a personal loan. I paid interest. I was not charged with bribery. And there was no

00:58:48.320 bribery charges. Okay. So that's number one. So put that aside. That's one. Okay. But here's why that

00:58:53.920 became an issue. Because that loan that he lent me was actually when I went to Iraq. I was building a

00:59:01.260 house. And I was building... I didn't know how much time I was going to be in Iraq. I was building

00:59:06.260 a house. I was making a really good... a lot of money. And I needed to make sure that while I was

00:59:11.800 gone, I'm going to be making $140,000 a year now. And I was making a million.

00:59:16.520 What year is this? This is...

00:59:17.640 This is... This is... This is... Oh, so this is post you being the CEO of

00:59:22.320 Giuliani's company? It was during that time.

00:59:24.880 During that time. Is it you started your own? Or is it you're working as a CEO of Rudy Giuliani's

00:59:30.720 company? Right. I was the CEO.

00:59:31.920 Got it. Because I know you left afterwards and you started your own deal.

00:59:34.620 That was later. You got some contracts.

00:59:35.560 But in 03, we're working together. Got it.

00:59:37.820 I get a call from the White House to go to Iraq. I said yes. When I said yes, I have to accept their

00:59:43.580 salary. Got it.

00:59:44.680 So I go from making a million dollars a year to making $140,000 a year. So I want to make sure

00:59:49.640 that I can finish my house. Yeah.

00:59:51.340 I borrow $250,000 from a friend and I go about my business. On the conflict of interest or on the financial

00:59:59.440 disclosure, I don't even remember what it was. One of them, when my accountants and my staff,

01:00:05.140 we started filling out all the stuff because they didn't make monthly payments on this thing,

01:00:10.420 on this loan. It was just a personal loan that I was going to pay back. We didn't put it on the

01:00:15.200 conflict of interest report. That was a federal charge.

01:00:18.640 That is a federal charge.

01:00:19.760 Yeah. It's a full statement or whatever. It's a federal charge.

01:00:23.540 Okay. Fair enough.

01:00:24.400 So that's one. The nanny, remember I said I paid the taxes, I paid the fines, I paid the

01:00:29.920 months. But okay. So listen, six counts.

01:00:33.040 Is that a federal charge though?

01:00:34.640 Yes.

01:00:35.100 The nanny is a federal charge.

01:00:36.200 Listen, they charge me. Now it was, they considered two years, right, that I had the nanny.

01:00:40.660 Okay. So two counts of failing to pay payroll tax, two counts of failing to put it on my IRS documents,

01:00:50.900 and two counts of failing to tell my tax preparer. So for the nanny that I paid cash, six federal

01:00:58.700 counts, they charge me. I got news for you. I challenge you. I challenge you to go in any

01:01:05.620 court docket in this country and see where they've done that to anybody else in the country. Never

01:01:10.440 happens.

01:01:11.140 So let me ask you another question here on that. The part with Karl Rove, I don't know how you

01:01:16.440 feel about Karl Rove, and I don't know your relationship with him. The other part where

01:01:20.380 you read about him and say, well, this was a way that Karl Rove brought you in to taint you

01:01:27.420 indirectly to taint Rudy. So that's nonsense. So you're not, you're not putting any value behind

01:01:32.620 that one. Okay. So you're not even saying that could be a reason. I'm talking for the

01:01:37.120 nomination for, so, so Mary Giuliani wouldn't get the next nomination. Nope. Okay. No. Got it. So

01:01:42.180 now, so this happens, you go up, you apologize. You say, you let the people down. You, all you said

01:01:48.800 is, please, uh, allow me to come back and be able to spend time with my wife and kids. The sooner I can

01:01:54.240 do that, allow me that. But you didn't go out there and say, deny any of it. You just kind of said,

01:01:58.400 Hey, if I did it, I did it. I'll deal with it. Yeah. So, okay. And that

01:02:02.460 reminds me of a scene from judge, which I don't know if you've seen a movie, the judge

01:02:05.620 with Robert Duvall. I don't know if you've seen it or not. The end scene, you got to see

01:02:08.920 it. So very unique, especially you, I think you would really appreciate the ending of that

01:02:12.480 movie. It's with Robert Downey Jr. and Duvall. And if you know, Duvall, obviously, you know,

01:02:16.340 Godfather, you would love Duvall and how I handles it. He said, if I did the crime, I want to pay

01:02:20.240 for it because I've been a judge for the last 42 years. If I did it, I did it. So now you go and

01:02:25.460 you do three years, you come out that entire process that happens pretty fast, right? When you go through

01:02:31.680 that, what are you now thinking yourself that you're out, you know, and what, what did that

01:02:36.640 time that you did in prison, what did that do to you? Did that help you think about it? What are

01:02:41.620 you thinking? It's not only, it's not only the time in prison. It's from the beginning of the process

01:02:47.380 to the time I came home. It's all one. It's all one because it's, it's like this blur of, it's a blur

01:02:57.560 of stuff that you go through that you never expected to go through. How do you get targeted?

01:03:05.820 You know, really? Are they attacking me because of this nanny thing? Really? You know, they're

01:03:11.440 going to charge me for this, you know, not having the loan on a financial disclosure.

01:03:16.560 Why did you say, yeah, I did the crime. If I did it, you know, I have to face the crime.

01:03:20.520 Well, I'll tell you why. First of all, when you are fighting federal criminal charges,

01:03:26.140 it's a fight for your life. Literally, it's a fight for your life because that felony conviction

01:03:30.940 is a life sentence of collateral consequence that's going to crucify you personally, financially,

01:03:36.320 and professionally. So that's number one. If you fight it, if you say, I didn't do it,

01:03:41.660 is that, is that what the fight is or? Well, you can't win. You can't win. You only have the

01:03:47.140 constitutional rights you think you have if you have the money to pay for them. How much influence

01:03:50.960 did Mayor Giuliani or President Bush have at the time to be able to help you with that? The only one

01:03:55.000 that could have helped me was President Bush. Why didn't he? Most of them will not. Why not,

01:03:59.920 though? He nominated, he brought you up. It doesn't make any difference. Do you have any hard feelings

01:04:04.360 about that at all? I get it. Most politicians don't have the courage to stand up and say,

01:04:11.440 this is wrong. Was there any motive behind it or was it just, you know? No, no, no. They just don't

01:04:15.780 have the courage to do it to politicians. You can't fight the U.S. government unless you are a

01:04:21.660 multi-multi-millionaire or billionaire. You just can't. And I'll explain why. During the whole course

01:04:27.060 of this thing from 2006 to 2009, you really go back to 05, 05 to 09, I was averaging legal bills of

01:04:36.600 about 100,000 a month. 100,000 a month. Then closer to the end, we're up to 150 a month.

01:04:44.060 So in October of 2009, I was remanded. The judge didn't like the fact, in my case,

01:04:53.360 one of my attorneys, he sent an email to the Washington Times and he said, be in court on

01:04:59.020 this day because we found prosecutorial misconduct. We found the government suppressed evidence. They

01:05:04.900 suborned perjury. Found all this stuff. Be in court on that day. Well, the judge found out. When he found

01:05:09.820 out, instead of addressing it, he remanded me, revoked my bail, put me in jail, and told me he's

01:05:17.140 going to suspend my attorneys again for the third time. Well, at this point, I'm out of money. I can't

01:05:24.480 keep doing, I can't, you can't keep doing this. And on October of 2009, in that month that I was

01:05:32.420 remanded, my legal bill for one month was, for a month, 30 days, my legal bill was $476,000.

01:05:43.100 How do you, how do you fight that? How do you do that? And at that point, I told my attorneys,

01:05:47.600 I said, go see the prosecutors. I'm like, quit. I'll take a plea. Tell me what I'm pleading to.

01:05:52.460 I'll plead whatever they want. I can't do this anymore because my wife and kids are going to live

01:05:57.040 in the street if I keep doing it. That is the problem with the federal system. And that's being

01:06:02.660 targeted when you get into the system and you see the flaws and failures and you see, you know,

01:06:09.000 I thought it was just me. Let me ask you this other question. You know, I had, I have friends who were

01:06:13.460 cops. When I got out of the military, a lot of people become cops. You know, the whole thing is

01:06:17.060 when you get out of the, you were in Fort Bragg, go be a cop, you know, go be a firefighter, go be UPS,

01:06:21.480 you'll get 10 points. You get whatever that thing's on your score. So my friends want to be cops.

01:06:25.320 And I would ask him, I said, so tell me, what is it to be a cop? And one of my friends got kicked

01:06:29.180 out of being a PD himself. So one day I'm sitting down, I said, so tell me what happened? And you

01:06:33.900 know how there's like different stories. There's a one story, which is what, man, I just did what

01:06:38.780 everybody else was doing and da, da, da, da, da. And I said, yeah, but what happened? Three months later,

01:06:44.080 six months later, 12 months later, I mean, this is my body. This is, we're hanging out together. I mean,

01:06:47.020 he would tell you the story right now himself. I will tell you one thing that happened.

01:06:50.320 So for him, what he was doing was he was doing steroids and was selling steroids to other cops.

01:06:57.440 And you know, cops do that a lot. It's a, it's a whole different thing. He said, the one thing

01:07:00.680 that happened with me is I really started thinking I'm above the law. And I started using some of my

01:07:07.900 power against civilians. And I started feeling within my family. I started feeling with my wife,

01:07:13.920 with my mom and dad, with my siblings, my peers. I felt like I was above the law because you couldn't

01:07:19.080 say anything to me because I have the badge and it was an LAPD guy. And that badge gave me a lot

01:07:24.060 of power. Right. So do you think sometimes, maybe even yourself or your career, because you're looking

01:07:29.300 back right now, reflecting, right? Like for me, when I sit back and I reflect on my life and I say,

01:07:34.040 okay, I used to live in Iran. We were bombed on. It was a very difficult time for me as a kid.

01:07:37.660 My parents got a divorce. I had very bipolar type of people in my life that were complicated and not

01:07:42.760 the loving, most incredible, you know, experience that you want. And then boom, we live in a refugee camp.

01:07:47.920 I get stabbed at 12 years old at the refugee camp. I come to the States. I go to high school. I have

01:07:52.620 a one-pointed GPA. In my life, it's been a pretty, you know, a mother-side communist,

01:07:57.140 dad-side imperialist. Like it's a lot of mess that I've gone through. Right. So I don't have a degree.

01:08:01.420 I don't have a four-year, two-year degree. And I go back. I think about what could I have done

01:08:05.520 differently. This is a mistake. I made that. When you go back yourself, did you see some trends where you

01:08:11.140 were kind of like, I can get away with this because I'm such and such. Not at all. Zero. No. At all. No.

01:08:17.700 You're not thinking, I wasn't thinking I did anything wrong. In fact, most of the counts

01:08:22.380 that I pled guilty to, that I actually pled guilty to, there were accounting issues that my

01:08:28.460 accountants dealt with. I didn't really, I didn't fill out my taxes. I didn't do that stuff.

01:08:33.860 So how do you live today with all that? Like, is there any bitterness in you? Like,

01:08:37.840 you know, knowing how much more you could have contributed to, you know, service. Is there anything

01:08:41.940 where you could say, I could have done this differently? Because it sounds like you don't have

01:08:44.880 outside of accounting stuff. Yeah. You know what I could have done differently? I could have,

01:08:47.240 you know, I could have, I could have been, you know, the goody two shoes, you know, gone to school

01:08:56.400 and, you know, clerk for the judge and gone to law school and all this stuff. I could have done that.

01:09:01.820 And I could have gone that route. But I didn't. And, you know, I personally think I'm satisfied with

01:09:10.180 what I've done for this country. You know, I'm sorry this stuff happened the way it happened.

01:09:17.140 If I could have done something differently that I thought of at the time.

01:09:21.180 Well, then let's, let's wrap up with this final thought. I was in UK last week and I was interviewing

01:09:26.040 a few people and we talked about the receipt, is it recidivision rate? Right. And the numbers came up

01:09:34.080 for America, right? Right. And I think U.S. is 56% after 56% of inmates go back a year later, 67% three years

01:09:45.180 later, but 76% five years later. Right. Like the system is created to get you to go back into prison,

01:09:52.420 if that makes any sense. Right. So, you know, that's how the system is set up. What do you think

01:09:56.520 about the current system that we have ourselves? And if there was anything you would change with the

01:10:02.160 current system, we have, we have a lot of people in prison that sold weed or, you know, you know,

01:10:06.340 that's nothing like, you know, major, but they're still in prison nowadays. And it's a pretty high

01:10:11.620 cost. I think the number I saw was like $76 billion a year. Let me help you. The prison system,

01:10:16.560 the criminal justice system in America is horrendous. It's horrible. It's horrible for a number of

01:10:22.860 reasons. One, we put people in prison that shouldn't be there. Prison is for bad guys. Bad guys do bad

01:10:30.680 things. Prison is for people that you want to protect society from. That's what prison should

01:10:36.520 be for. That's what it was originally created for. That's not what we use it for. We put commercial

01:10:42.020 fishermen that caught too many fish in prison. Somebody sells a whale's tooth on eBay. We put

01:10:46.420 them in prison. We take a young black kid that sells three dime bags of marijuana and we charge

01:10:51.580 him federally and give him 55 years. Are you kidding? That's crazy to me. That's insane. So what do you do

01:10:56.780 about it? Insane. Well, you do what I've done for the last five years since I get out. You fight

01:11:01.140 Congress, who I think is completely inept most of the time. You fight them to change. You fight them

01:11:08.740 to create change. We're sitting right now on a historic piece of legislation that I think is going

01:11:16.320 to be, it's going to be voted on within the next two days. Is this the email you were talking about

01:11:20.800 The First Step Act? Yeah. Got it. Right. I've been pushing this for five years, but this is only a

01:11:27.020 small part of the criminal justice system. You can't put people in prison, suck all the societal values

01:11:34.800 out of them, institutionalize them, turn them into monsters and think you're going to send them home

01:11:40.240 and everything's going to be okay. It's not. That's why that recidivism rate is so damn high

01:11:46.100 because we're not doing anything for them. You have to do something. If you're going to put them

01:11:50.620 in prison and you're going to destroy their lives, well then at least do something so that when they

01:11:57.460 get home, they can get a job, a real job, then go to work, take care of the family, take care of

01:12:02.840 their kids, pay taxes. Because as it stands right now, we don't do none of that. For me, it's a lot

01:12:07.920 of connecting the dots with all these different stories. And I hope we go in a direction where

01:12:12.800 something happens with this because at this pace, you're getting young boys that are making

01:12:18.320 mistakes that ruins the rest of their lives and they're going into prison learning even other

01:12:22.380 bad habits. It's a life sentence. It's a life sentence. Yeah, I see it a lot. Of collateral

01:12:25.540 consequence that they can't get out from under. Yeah, but I want to hear from you. I'm curious

01:12:29.560 to know what you think about it. Again, Bernard Carrick, sir, thank you so much for being a guest

01:12:33.260 on Valuetainment. Thank you. Appreciate your time. Thank you. Thanks everybody for listening. And by the way,

01:12:37.240 if you haven't already subscribed to Valuetainment on iTunes, please do so. Give us a five star

01:12:42.520 write a review if you haven't already. And if you have any questions for me that you may have,

01:12:46.520 you can always find me on Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, or YouTube. Just search my name,

01:12:51.280 Patrick MidDavid. And I actually do respond back when you snap me or send me a message

01:12:56.240 on Instagram. With that being said, have a great day today. Take care, everybody. Bye-bye.

Valuetainment - March 13, 2019

Episode 280： NYPD Commissioner Opens Up - From the White House to A Felon

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